larouchejugend

just when i thought i had escaped my nemeses.

last week my mailbox, along with the rest of the policy grad students', was stuffed with the latest wacko-tract from ex-felon, sociopath, fascist nutbag and perennial presidential candidate larouche.

it's sad is what it is. . jason, the guy mentioned in this wikipedia entry on the "larouche youth" movement was my friends' college roommate from stanford. after being mind-swept by larouchies, he left to brainwash other once-bright idealistic younguns. so long, stanford! hello, crazy!

consider this famous larouche quote:

"I AM GOING TO MAKE YOU ORGANIZERS -- by taking your bedrooms away from you . . . What I shall do is expose to you the cruel act of your sexual impotence . . . I will take away from you all hope that you can flee the terrors of politics to the safety of 'personal life.' I shall do this by showing to you that your frightened personal sexual life contains for you such terrors as the outside world could never offer you. I will thus destroy your rabbit-holes, mental as well as physical. I shall destroy your sense of safety in the place to which you ordinarily imagine you can flee."

the washington post did a fantastic article on him in 2004 -- read it here. brainwashing, inexplicable murders, international intrigue. it's a fascinating story. too bad it's real. and the proof is in the crazy-eyes of all the larouche youth on DC streetcorners and, apparently, at least one crazy in A2.

for more fun, check the FEC database to see if anyone in your town is nuts enough to donate to him. you'll be amazed how many there are.

shaped like a mitten, cold like a cowboy

ahoy children of israel! i bring great news from the north.

a lie. i have no news. but the bloggery beckons el vaquero frio nevertheless to his innumerable adoring digital fans.

i love you all. alas! you know not how bone-chillingly high my secret hit-counter for this site has risen! rest assured: bone-chillingly high.

know this:

michigan is cold and they have a large football stadium.

the construction workers who've been painting my house for a month play strictly pop country hits starting at 8:30am

when the football team plays, energy drinks and chewing tobaccos sponsor frat house tailgating parties.

i still like ann arbor.

there are a billion record stores.

it's lots of work

but better than actual work

calculus is my favorite class

if i was a crazy man, i would ride a pony-on-a-stick always.

i will try to post real things when real things happen.

not that they haven't

i'm just lazy again, and it's marvelous

as an added treat just for you, i have written a tlcnet-style angst poem about graduate school:

Softly have they hewn,
cleverly;
the names of the sweater-clad tenured ones,
their studies,
their research methods,
their aclu donation receipts,
their beards,
their contempt for the cell phone,
their memorized seating charts,
their powerpoint presentations,
their poopy journals;

Softly have they hewn,
cleverly;
hewn them into the living skulls of the admitted,
like so many squealing, teething, milk-hungry tiger cubs,
fed daily on the lactose of their homogenized,
pasteurized brain feculence,
corking each precious fang
with
the
blood
of
the
righteous.

did you like my poem? i love you.

the verdict

michigan it is.

escape from D.C.

let the exodus begin.

dang, dawg. it's grad school decision time. the degree is a masters of public policy. i already gave the slip to georgetown and american - this town is so played out. the ol' cowboy came here to fix this town and as you can see, mission accomplished. so i'm headin' back to the heartland, ladies. the only question remains: where shall i take up residence for the next 52 fortnights?

the two contenders:

1. ann arbor : university of michigan to be exact. got into their public policy program, but with only a meager workstudy. still, the list price is a bit cheaper than u of c. i visited the campus last weekend and was blown away. they have one of the top 5 programs in the country - seems like it's considered marginally better than u of chicago but with different emphasis. the average class size is between 10 and 18 - there are 85 students total in the entering class. i've never met happier grad students - they clearly have a heavy workload and a very intensive program but they also love what they're doing and couldn't say enough good things about their professors.

the program also allows for a dual degree in Urban Planning with an emphasis in transportation policy. happens to be one of the best urban planning programs in the country as well... go figure. all in all, a badass choice that incorporates everything i wanted to do with my masters.

2. chicago : university of chicago to be exact. got into their public policy program (is that jeff goldblum?) and with a fat ol' scholarship to boot. tha' benefitz iz obviouz - fresh town, full o' tweaked out homies and dank flygirls and most of my tuition already paid for. not that ann arbor blows, but it's obviously no chicago.

on the other hand, after my trip to ann arbor i find it hard to imagine u of chicago can compare curriculumwise. no urban planning emphasis, very few of the class opportunities offered by a school of Michigan's size. just the best economics program in the country (tied with MIT). but i shall find out this weekend when i visit.


oh, and i've got to make my choice by the end of next week.

seriously

i've given up on doing 'work'. now all i want to do is answer peanut guy questions.

more SOTU

oh yeah remember that whole "the u.s. is addicted to oil" part of the state of the union address? just kididng

SOTU play by play

oh isn't that sweet? it's brand new justice ammy alito! he looks so happy walking in! poor breyer inbetween him and clarence thomas! somebody feed him a dramamine!

condi steps out. good gravy she's looking foxy tonight. there's attorney general gonzalez! i'm fucking starstruck just sitting on my couch - how can those a-hole members of congress contain themselves?

oh great jolly rumsfeld! how spirited you laugh on national television before the speaker's podium!

oh fuck yes! chertoff is in the house. try not to piss yourselves, congressmen!

three words: norman. fucking. mineta. secretary of transportation doesn't give a fuck: he'll privatize him some amtrak and then he'll take a shit and he won't care. the man is a prince. prince of the cabinet. most princely of secretaries is he.


bill livingood belts it out - that man still has his man-testes. he's yelling at the press: "move back, bitches!" bill livingood will beat that photographer in his stupid face. the president's coming through, poopstains! grovel before him!

bush kisses condoleeza. bush hesitates to kiss alito. bush shakes the hand of the joint chiefs. he doesn't kiss them either. then he skips up on the podium like a dandy and chuckles like a wee scottish lad in his highland knickers. what would happen now if the teleprompter broke like it did on clinton? answer: everyone would poop themselves.

oh how sweet, he's leading off with a coretta scott king memorial, and how touching of NBC to flash up their own coretta scott memorial graphic!. then he wastes no time reminding everyone about 9/11. his ears are especially elfin tonight. and like a prick, he subtly accuses all of his opponents of being cruel.

pursue the enemies of freedom!
warns against isolation and protectionism! who the fuck is advocating that?
we seek the end of tyranny! (good job so far!)

ah, so it's weapons of mass murder now? where have i been?

"the terrorists have chosen the weapon of fear" - i think my first clue was when they earned the name "terror-ist". does "fear" count as a "weapon of mass murder?"

cheney takes a sip from his water like a palsied ogre.

how exactly would the united states "retreat from the world?" is such a move possible? let's talk more about this.

cut to lynne cheney with some little girl - how sweet! the girl hates evildoers. she loves freedom and nick lachey.

"i am confident in the will of the iraqi people" - you are also a crazy bastard.

"there is a difference between responsible criticism...and defeatism!... second guessing is not a strategy!" : 1) responsible criticism is criticism that comes from republicans. 2) holy shit, john murtha and his democratic henchmen want to put bin laden and zarqawi in charge of iraq! hide the kids!

[pause for brief jingoistic exploitation of military death]

holy crap, andy card looks like a pedophile!

isolationism mentioned again. who advocates this...? ah, i see! so isolationism = against the war! you isolationist savages wear your hemp and flash your peace signs while the kids in zambia die of the river blindness!

others want to centralize more power in washington by raising taxes!!!! you democrat fucks! thank you president bush for stopping their insidious power grab!

promises to save 14 billion by cutting social programs while saying it's also important to renew the tax cuts (that cost $880 billion!

actually lies outright on the amount of money it will take to save social security. bush wags finger at democrats who embarrass him.

you democrats with your partisanship! a-holes!

mentions immigration, amnesty. conservatives fart audibly in protest.

ah, 'making use of electronic records' will help me pay my $1000 hospital bill from last month! thank you president!

and once again we repeat the outright lie that lawsuits and lawyers cost consumers more than insurance bitches.

the future of american energy?: coal and nuclear power.

hey dick: the research is done on alternative fuels. we know how they work. federal funding needs to go into infrastructure. oh shit, that's socialism!

time to talk about education: flash back to lynne cheney and the kid. how cute.

math and science education though: probably the first part of the speech that makes sense. we're going to get donged on this. we're already being donged.

secretary of education margaret spellings? fox.

no child left behind act? donkey poop.

"our greatness is measured in who we are and how we treat one another" -- fuck yeah, torture!

"a revolution of conscience!" the kiddies are going conservative, bitches!

it's feelgood time!: "everyone, republican and democrat, has a right to be proud of our record"

i know! let's equate jack abramoff and gay marriage!

laura bush has creepy blue fake contact lenses, like some kind of fremin robotress.

ah, katrina talk! hey, it's not my fault, it's the locals! hey you fucks! the schools sucked and that's why you're homeless now!

someone's nokia cell phone goes off during AIDS talk

finale: "every great victory in history comes to a point in choosing"

...and so has every great failure.

"just pizza" pt. 2

like sunburned moseses we held back the tides of madness with the flimsy veil of hope that we might one day discover some heavenly portal to deliver us back from whence we came. for days we slogged onward in the freakish humidity that snarled our hair and summoned cascades of sweat from our tortured pores. our soiled "clothes" baked and crisped off our bodies within hours. and at length we shunned our civilized past and went primal once more, our bones protruding from flesh worn thin by lack of nourishment.

for despite the intoxicating aroma of our terrible new home, we found to sign of food. no game to hunt, no fronds on which to nibble, not even insect pests to collect and suck free of life. our frenzied attempts at rehydration slowed our pace significantly, for the only palatable water source appeared to be scattered dimples of paltry moisture in the rubbery soil from which we frantically sucked the very sweat of the earth. we called it "sweat diving."

it was nicorette who, lost in the primal impetus of a lustful sweat dive, discovered the delectability of the earth itself.

there, crouched like a filthy cro-magnon centerfold, hair lionized by the freakish humidity, lips frothing with crude streaks of hot drool, face stained by luscious morsels of piping-hot earth, nicorette bent her haunted eyes skyward and bellowed the clarion call: "just! pizza!"

and like beasts, we ate. and ate. and ate.